I was at Ace this evening looking through the hardware section and noticed steel dowel pins in a variety of diameters and lengths. Heck, they're even beveled and look like unpolished slugs.

A quick search shows that these are most typically "hardened alloy steel." Wikipedia tells me this means low carbon steel alloyed with any number of other metals like aluminum, boron, cobalt, molybdenum, nickel, tungsten to add particular working properties.

If you have a coal powered furnace, it's relatively easy: you heat parts red hot, stop blowing air and adding coal, cover parts in a lot of ash and "forget" about them overnight.

Or if a gas or electric powered oven, you just cut gas/electricity off, close the doors and wait a few hours/

If neither available, a common trick is to place parts on a thick plate of iron, heat the whole shebang with a gas torch (with small parts even a plumber's torch works) , remove torch and cover parts and plate with a piece of asbestos (it should also be sitting on some asbestos) .

Could you add to your comment about annealing, or point me to a thread that may have more info if you know of one. I'd be interested in annealing some steel parts. Thanks.

Hello,
The way it is done in a metal shop to small parts is to heat them red hot, and then bury them in a box of lime, causing very slow cooling. You could use dry cement in place the lime. The process just calls for it to cool slowly.

Could you add to your comment about annealing, or point me to a thread that may have more info if you know of one. I'd be interested in annealing some steel parts. Thanks.

As many have said, the point is to get the stuff red hot, then cool slowly.

Small objects will tend to scale (oxidize) badly when heated red hot in air. One classic solution is to put the workpieces in a piece of black iron pipe with unplated cast iron caps, with a bit of paper (to consume the oxygen in the closed pipe and heat the assembly to a red heat, then cover the pipe with ashes or lime or whatever to slow the cooling. It may be useful to put anti-seize (as used for automobile exhaust systems) on the pipe threads.

The reason to use black iron pipe and caps, versus zinc plated, is to avoid "zinc fever", which is cause by breathing the fumes from when the zinc metal evaporates on the way to red heat.

Hi Andrew, did you finally find a place where to buy soft iron in rods or bars in Europe? I'm looking for the same thing. Thanks.

Somewhat belatedly, but if still of interest, I represent Bohler Uddeholm Strip products in the UK, and we produce and manage Remko Soft Magnetic Iron supplies worldwide.
You can find a useful link to our technical brochure here: https://www.yumpu.com/xx/document/vi...-uddeholm-uk/5

Somewhat belatedly, but if still of interest, I represent Bohler Uddeholm Strip products in the UK, and we produce and manage Remko Soft Magnetic Iron supplies worldwide.
You can find a useful link to our technical brochure here: https://www.yumpu.com/xx/document/vi...-uddeholm-uk/5

Any other questions, we'd be pleased to help if possible.

It looks interesting, but I couldn't get the handbook to work properly on my computer, and I don't use any of the social media. Where do I get a plain old pdf?

They're playing our song

Hi guys I'm new to the forum but seen the question asked about iron, i only use pure iron to make slugs and keepers. Iron has more magnetic lines per square inch than steel and the end product is a more responsive humbucker........it's also ready available in the U.K. It's a bit expensive but worth it when you hear the end result.... Hi all by the way I'm Raymond and pleased to meet you.

Hi guys I'm new to the forum but seen the question asked about iron, i only use pure iron to make slugs and keepers. Iron has more magnetic lines per square inch than steel and the end product is a more responsive humbucker........it's also ready available in the U.K. It's a bit expensive but worth it when you hear the end result.... Hi all by the way I'm Raymond and pleased to meet you.

Hi Raymond

As I started this post could you let me know where you get your pure iron from in the uk.

Hi Andrew, checkout pureiron.com you may have to email Don to get access to the pricelist, where are you from if it's the uk their carriage is a bit pricey but you can arrange your own courier....... They will sell your sheets of 300x300x3 great for making keepers and pure iron bar for slugs......let me know how you get on, ps are you using a cnc winder I think I seen you name on an other forum lately. Regards Raymond.

Hi Andrew, checkout pureiron.com you may have to email Don to get access to the pricelist, where are you from if it's the uk their carriage is a bit pricey but you can arrange your own courier....... They will sell your sheets of 300x300x3 great for making keepers and pure iron bar for slugs......let me know how you get on, ps are you using a cnc winder I think I seen you name on an other forum lately. Regards Raymond.

Hi Raymond
Thanks for the reply. I'm living in Austria but from England. I do use a cnc winder for humbuckers (one of the first ones from cncdudez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye_pUOLggMM) Sean made me a smaller version at the time which is the one in the video and it's been working fine since then. I believe he's updated the winder and now makes a smaller winder for pickup makers.

Hi Andrew, yes I seen your name on his forum I use the mini coil winder great piece of kit. I Seen on another tread somebody asked for help on script writhing, was it you and or do you need any help .........I'm more than happy to help and more.........to help people script writing on these machines...it's amazing what equations you can apply in excel.

Hi Andrew, yes I seen your name on his forum I use the mini coil winder great piece of kit. I Seen on another tread somebody asked for help on script writhing, was it you and or do you need any help .........I'm more than happy to help and more.........to help people script writing on these machines...it's amazing what equations you can apply in excel.

Hi Raymond
Thanks for the offer. I haven't gone down the script writing road with the winder, although it does look interesting. Sean made me a hand guider/controller with potentiometer that I can guide the feeder by hand and save the movements into the software, sort of cnc scatterwinding? I haven't had much time to use this as i'm fairly busy with guitar repairs.